What Do You Want to Know About Going Off-Grid? (Part Two) š”
I felt the need to draft a part two after asking this question on Twitter and getting some fantastic responses :)
Are you a homesteader? Iām starting a podcast where I interview homesteaders and people who have gone āback to the landā about their experiences. I think the stories of people who are successfully homesteading have the potential to be useful to those who are exploring doing that some day.
If thatās you, Iād love to speak with you! Send me an email.
Last week, I wrote a post titled, āWhat Do You Want to Know About Going Off-Grid?ā
In the post, I asked for readers to respond with any questions they had about going off-grid or āback to the landā.
My dark night of the soul came this week when I received zero responses to the article on Substack.
However, this story has a happy ending because I posted the same question on Twitter and received 7-8 thoughtful replies.
Hereās a link to the original tweet if youād like to check them out. Iāve also made a list below.
Here are the questions. Click the link to read the thread for that question. 2 and 3 have short discussions.
āWho's gonna do the non-knowledge work?ā
āIs it possible to generate enough electricity off-grid using renewable sources to power all our needs and support an urban-ish lifestyle?ā
āIs there a way to recreate off-grid, homestead, or land-based lifestyle in urban areas or areas surrounding?ā
āhonestly the nit grit of household budgeting, childrearing, that sort of thingā
āHow do we change our city infrastructures to be "land based"? Which I'm guessing you mean as "in harmonious relationship with land"? WTF are we doing living on land and not living "land-based" life styles??? Somehow humans are doing that. not for long though!ā
Also, @zacharymarlow put out a call to anyone interested in creating a network of communities to share resources, collective and create living alternatives to capitalism.
I for one, am very interested in doing this.
Lastly, @superbuffo suggested that I āAsk Henry David Thoreauā. Honestly, itās not bad advice.
It got me thinking: why do people go off-grid?
Why Do People Go Off-Grid?
While I have yet to go truly āoff-gridā, I did live at a retreat center in rural Upstate NY for a year. Living at the Abode gave me a taste of living in a small, decentralized community, and what itās like to live in a communal sense.
For instance, as a resident at the Abode, I worked the Sunday brunch shift every week and worked with 2-3 others to feed 40-200 people every week. We had a beautiful kitchen with professional cooking equipment. The dining hall could fit around 60 or so people.
I helped gather eggs and slop the chickens 1-2 times per week. In the Summer, we swam in the pond on the property.
I shared so many meals with the other residents, people in the immediate community, and Abode guests. There were almost always people around to share a meal with or to talk to, or go on an adventure with.
I miss it. I think Iād still live there if I wasnāt evicted for trying to help organize the residents against the Abode board.
An aside: Itās weird, I feel like I should tell the full story of my experience of living at The Abode in this newsletter, but I just havenāt been able to tackle that yet. I do feel like telling that story might be interesting or useful to some readers here.
If you want to read an in-progress draft you can check it out here and leave a comment or two. Itās mostly a sketch right now, but any feedback is welcome.
Why Did I Go āBack to the Landā?
First, I went up to the Abode because I was burnt out and sick of New York.
I was also trying to navigate a career change from working as a freelance cameraman and video editor, to working as a freelance copywriter. I was actually cold-calling to find clients and it was not going well.
Honestly, I was also pretty lonely. Kind of like now haha.
I feel more well-adjusted now than I did back in 2018, but thereās something alienating about New York City to me, or maybe itās how I feel about living in most cities?
I still experienced the occasional bout of loneliness while living at The Abode, but overall, I was happier than Iād been in a long time. Living in community is healing, it really is.
To sum it up, I moved up there because I was feeling lonely and burnt out, and NYC was eating through my savings. It was both that I felt like I was out of opportunities in NYC, and I wanted to live somewhere beautiful, in nature, and in community. I knew a few people from NYC who lived in the community as acquaintances/friends.
That was enough for me to apply for their work-exchange program after my first visit, which was *checks notes* on May 5th, 2018.
I moved up there on July 3rd, and lived there until June 2019, when I moved into a small, funky, very-humid studio in New Lebanon, NY. I lived there for about a year, then moved to Easthampton, MA, then back to NYC where a plant-sitting gig turned into a full-on move back to the city.
Iām currently preparing to go live at CabinDAOās Neighborhood Zero for 2-3 months, and then will be visiting different homesteads and land projects after that. I plan to buy a truck with a camper, or a van that I can convert.
14 Reasons Why People Homestead/Go āBack to the Landā
This is something I want to learn more about on the podcast Iām launching, but off the top of my head, hereās a prospective list:
City life is too expensive
A slower, calmer lifestyle is desired
They want to own a home
They want to experiment with farming and growing their own food
More space is desired. (I dream of building an art/music studio in a barn)
They want a closer relationship with nature
They see a rural setting as a safer, more peaceful place to raise a family
A group of people have a dream to create a place where people with similar identities and beliefs can come to live (religious retreat centers, black-owned farms, queer land projects, anarchist land projects)
Financial freedom/get out of debt/work less
Food sovereignty
Building a lifestyle that can adapt to climate change/energy independence
De-stress/become "time rich"/cultivate "deep time"
It's biologically, how human beings are meant to live
They want to live in community with neighbors practicing the same lifestyle
This piece from a homesteading blog called Hillsborough Homesteading served as an inspiration for compiling this list.
Hereās a couple more reasons from a Twitter thread I posted on the topic:
Reasons Not to Homestead
As I write this, itās late-ish on a Saturday, nearly 5:20pm and the sun has pretty much set. I am in my favorite restaurant in Ridgewood, While in Kathmandu, three chiyas deep.
To round out this post, a few tweets on why *not* to homestead.
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